Newcomers
by Auchen
Summary: (Originally written after Rocky Road.) Emma receives a call from Hook about two suspicious strangers who seem to know about the ice wall situation. Unfortunately, one of the strangers may be Norse god of mischief, who is notoriously uncooperative.


**A/N:** This fic was unashamedly inspired by startraveller776's fantastic Loki/Jane OUAT crossover fic she wrote last season. You can read that here: /works/1041148

This fic will probably just a oneshot for now, but we'll see.

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><p>Hook was right, they were newcomers, but by all appearances they seemed fairly benign. But appearances, Emma had learned all too sorely learned, could be deceiving.<p>

The unknown woman and man sat at a table outside of Granny's diner, whispering to each other. The dark haired woman's eyes were drawn into a scowl and she gestured wildly while the man sat there in strange leather clothing with a self-satisfied smirk.

Emma came when she received a voice mail from Hook. She was half tempted to ignore it because he'd accidentally butt dialed her within the last two hours, but considering the town _was _still surrounded by a giant ice wall, it was probably better to err on the side of caution and listen to it.

The voice mail had said, "Swan, there's a woman and a man outside of Granny's diner. I haven't seen them here before, but they seem somewhat suspicious, if you ask me. I've heard them saying something about—ugh! This device is shutting off on me again! Bloody—"

And so she found herself waiting outside of the diner for Hook to finish telling her his whatever message was before he'd been rudely interrupted by his uncharged phone. Emma's patience was rewarded, for he walked up to her moments later, shooting a glare at the new pair.

"Those are the ones I told you about," he said, waving his hand at them.

"Yes, I gathered that," she laughed.

"If you ask me, Storybrooke has enough leather clad, dark haired, accented men running around," Hook mumbled.

Emma smiled. "You're afraid he's trying to steal your shtick?"

"Hardly."

Emma tilted her head towards them, indicating that they should go confront the two of them. Hook followed after her as she approached the table. The man looked up with a raised eyebrow, and the woman just pressed a hand to her forehead.

Since they had done nothing outwardly wrong, it was probably best to go at this with gently rather than with force. Emma plastered a smile to her face.

"Hello, I'm the sheriff of Storybrooke. I just wanted to welcome you to our town, and see what brought you here. We don't get many people here especially since…there's been extensive road construction."

Hook gave her a look. "Road construction?" he mouthed.

She shrugged. It was the best thing she could come up with at the moment.

"Ah Jane, I told you it wouldn't be long until we attracted the local law enforcement. I suspected that one," the man gestured at Hook, "would tell her sooner rather than later."

Hook laughed. "Why did you think that?"

"Please, I saw you following her around earlier. It does not take an intellectual to figure out the nature of your relationship."

Great, another man that circumvented questions through sarcastic comments. He wasn't her best bet for prying the truth from, then. Emma looked to the woman named Jane.

Jane did not seem to notice Emma's gaze for a moment, but then she started. She gave a nervous laugh and a shrug. "Oh, we just travel around a lot. We didn't come here for any particular reason. We just thought it looked very nice."

Well, then. She wasn't going to be much more helpful than her companion. This day was just getting better by the minute.

"What she means is that it looked like a nice pitiful little town to stay the night in before we found a place more exciting," the man helpfully clarified.

Hook let out a deep sigh. "Enough of this. I heard the both of you whispering about magic, and something about a vase. Care to elaborate on that?"

"Actually, no. What I care to do is spend the rest of my afternoon uninterrupted with my lover while attempting to enjoy the…offerings given by this establishment." The man pointed at his cold, untouched lasagna.

Enough of this. They knew more than they were letting on and there was no way they could've gone through the ice wall without considerable effort aided by magic. Emma let her friendly facade fall from her like a veil and her mouth was pulled into a pinched frown.

"Listen, I've had enough of the games. I can tell when people are lying, and both of you are obviously doing that. So tell me what is going on here. Do you know something about the ice wall? Because if you do, then—"

"You're very to the point, aren't you?" The man had lowered his eyes and was pushing food around on his plate.

"Aye, she is. And I can be quite to the point as well." Hook put his namesake against the table by the man's hand.

The man ignored it for a moment and slid his green eyes up to meet Hook's blue ones. "Threatening me is never a good idea, _Captain_."

Jane thumped her hand against the table. "All right, enough of this, Loki. Let's just tell them."

Loki? Emma closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her temples. Great, the Norse god of mischief had landed right in the middle of her town. As if she hadn't been up to her eyeballs in manipulative people on all sides already.

"You honestly think they would just hand it over to us?"

Emma opened her eyes and pressed her hands against the table. She locked eyes with Jane. Jane bit her lip and flicked her eyes to Loki.

"Maybe," she said to the god. "We won't know if we don't tell them."

Loki opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, his girlfriend cut him off. "We're looking for a vase. It has runes on it, and it can hold living things, even people, inside of it. It's not from this world, though you'd probably think it was magic if you saw it. It belongs to his…kingdom."

Hook and Emma's eyes both jumped to each other's at the same moment.

"The one that Elsa was trapped in," Hook said in a low voice.

"Maybe they can help us."

"With all due respect, love, I don't think they're interested in anything but themselves."

"Mm, I can still hear you, you know. I'm not deaf," Loki drawled.

Emma turned back around and put her hands in her pockets. "We know what you're talking about. But we're aren't going to give it to you right now, because it has caused some problems here, and to be frank, I don't think you have very good intentions for it."

Loki grinned, and laced his fingers together. "That's all right. You not giving it to us just made this a lot more fun."

Jane jabbed him in the ribs. "We didn't come here to cause them more problems than they already have. Maybe if we help them they'll give it to us."

Loki pursed his lips and turned his eyes sky ward as if he was thinking very carefully about the proposition. "Perhaps you have a point. Besides, there seems to be an awful lot happening here that could provide some entertainment to me. And to you, I suppose. What with the magic running rampant in this place, you'll have something to study to your heart's content."

"What he means is that he'd love to help you," Jane said.

Emma snorted. "I doubt that."

"Well then," Loki said. "Let's get started."

But the way he said it made a knot clench in Emma's stomach. Hook was probably right, this god was out for himself, no one else. And that just added another problem to her pile of already growing ones.


End file.
